“Then I can guess it,” put in the wise Fibsy. “Man found dead in sealed room.”
“You’re a wizard! What made you think of that?”
“’Cause that’s the problem you like best, F. Stone. Wise me up some more.”
“It’s further interesting, because the victim is a great and good man, in fact, the President-elect of the University of Corinth.”
“My! Somebody didn’t want him for president? That the idea?”
“Apparently not. Nothing in the letter about that.”
“The relative who inherits the whole estate.”
“No reason as yet to think so. But the criminal mustn’t be guessed at. The point is, the locked room.”
“Stabbed. No weapon found and no way to get in or out of the locked room. Fine problem.”
“Yes—if we don’t find a secret stairway—or, a lying servant. Such cases generally fizzle out that way.”
Stone explained, for it was his habit to supplement McGuire’s very scant education by bits of information now and then, when time served.
“But, there’s a queer clause in the arrangement,” Stone went on, “if we find the evidence leading in a certain direction, the chase is to cease.”
“Of course not, and I’ll soon make that clear. But I can’t think it will lead in the given direction as that implicates a young girl, and rarely indeed, have I found a criminal answering to that description.”
“’Tisn’t usual—but, you know, F. Stone, since the war, girls are so independent and so cocky that there’s no telling what they’ll do. Me for the girl—as a suspect.”
“No, sir. I don’t admit it. See here, sir, if they’re so ’fraid s’picion will turn to that girl, there’s reason for it. Yet, as you can guess, if she didn’t do it, they want her skirts entirely cleared.”
“Pretty good deduction so far. But we can’t judge rationally until we know the facts.”
The facts were told them, when, some hours later, they sat, alone with Maurice Trask in the room where John Waring breathed his last.
“I’m a plain man,” Trask said, for he didn’t care to pose unduly before an astute detective. “I’ve come into this estate of my cousin’s—my second cousin, he was, and I started out with a firm determination to find the villain who killed him. But, there is some cause for suspicion of the young lady I expect to marry. And here’s the situation. If you can solve the mystery of Doctor Waring’s death, and free that girl from any taint of blame, go ahead. But if your investigation leads to her—stop it. I want to marry her just the same, whether she killed anybody or not. But if she didn’t do it, I want to know it.”